Science

I just need to get it out there to clear my guilt and I do hope I’m not the only one in kindergarten teacher land who did this! So here goes:

First of all- I didn’t even know there was going to be a Solar Eclipse until the middle of June.

I’m not a syfy kind of woman…

except I do enjoy watching Face Off on the Syfy Channel….but I don’t believe in Aliens…..

so space is not really my thing….

I personally enjoy keeping my feet planted on Earth…..except when I’m travelling in a jet.

Second of all- I had other things on my plate this summer where my mind did not even come back to Solar Eclipse Day! I mean…. I had Vacation Bible School, STEAM team meetings, workshop on learning about Monarch butterflies, a mission trip to Wales, TpT conference, the beach, and not to mention completing a remodeling project in my house. I enjoyed every second of these fun activities for the summer. ….

But THEN……

Preplanning began

and…………………..

I went to a meeting of all of the Science Curriculum Lead Teachers in our county and the words SOLAR ECLIPSE DAY came up in a discussion.

and…

It was a MAJOR discussion!!

like- What are we doing that day? Is there a plan for school to be cancelled? Is there any talk of our school day been extended? How much will our area be in the solar eclipse? Has anyone bought glasses for viewing the Solar Eclipse that day?

I’m telling you, It was stuff that I had not EVEN thought about!!

And I tell you I was slightly numb from it all……I thought…..

“YIKES!! This is a pretty important day!

But then to settle my whirling brain, I thought, ” However, it doesn’t actually happen until around 2:30pm in my neck of the woods and it will only be a partial eclipse for us, and my kinder cubs will be on a bus, or car going home. So I’ll just order some solar eclipse glasses for my class as a gift. I’ll attach a note about what they are for and I’ll be good.”

At that point my problem was solved, except I had not ordered glasses yet, but I least had a plan and I was good! I went on through the rest of my week with school meetings and preparing my class for Meet the Teacher Day and for the first day of school. And that is what I did…..

Until a week later!!

And Oh….but WOE was ME….and a few hundred or maybe thousands (I’m not really counting) more teachers in my county.

It became OFFICIAL!!

Our district was extending the school day on August 21st to keep the students safe while the Solar Eclipse was happening! And on a good note, the county school system was going to provide proper solar eclipse glasses for the event for every child and staff in our schools!!

WHAT?!?! An extended day?!?! Oh no?!?

School has JUST started and my brain can only handle the beginning of the year stuff for kindergarten!! I mean….

We’ve only been in school for 5 days!! FIVE days I tell you!!!!

Now I’ve got to add Solar Eclipse Day on top of just getting my act together with a new set of super sweet kindergarteners?!?! Oh WOW!! What was I to do???????

After I slept on it and rested last weekend, I calmed down…..

I calmed WAYYYYYY down….

I knew I could make this work for me and my new set of kinder cubs. This WAS going to be a very important event for our country and I wanted my kinder cubs to understand and experience it. That is what my job is and I’m very passionate about engaging and helping my students understand the world around them.

so…..

Here is the last part of my confession….

I am sitting here on a Saturday morning.

I just wrote up my plan for Monday’s event. Yep…..I haven’t had time to fully think about it until I sat down early this morning and researched activities for the Solar Eclipse and what it was I am going to do!

Therefore, I thought, why not share it with you in case you are trying to figure out your day as well!!

So here you go!!

Songs and Videos

During snack on Monday, I plan on showing a short video about the solar eclipse. I found one through PBS Kids using one of their shows:

At first, I was questioning this 12 minute show’s relevance to the solar eclipse, but then about 1/3 of the way through you see the solar eclipse come into play. It even discusses why we should never view the solar eclipse with our naked eye and they create a pin hole box viewer when they get ready to observe the solar eclipse. The students are very familiar with this PBS show, so I know they will be engaged watching it. If you would like to view it too, just click the logo above to get to the video.

I love to incorporate songs in as many subjects as I can. As I was looking for a video to watch on Monday, I came across a cute song that has a catchy little chorus throughout just using the words solar eclipse. It’s more like a rap until you get to the chorus part, but I think it will still grab my students’ attention. It also helps children not be so fearful of what the solar eclipse is.

Just click below to get to it.

Center Time!!

Within our county, we were sent many online resources to help with our instruction during Solar Ecplipse Day. I appreciate all that our county does to help us meet the needs of our students!!

However, being the blog, Facebook Teacher Group and TpT lover that I am, I found a resource that I decided would help me tremendously on Monday.

Thanks to awesome Simply Kinder for providing a super resource that is inexpensive with quick and easy resources for me to prepare and use on Monday!! There are several components to pick and choose from that will suit your instructional style and needs while your kiddos learn!

You can click any of the pics below to get straight to the resource!!

Since our day will be extended on Monday by 1 hour, I will have time to incorporate Science Small Group Stations that afternoon.

I have 16 students so I will have 4 groups of 4 students.

My center will be a reading lesson, using the Simply Kinder solar eclipse book that is included in her solar eclipse resource.

My paraprofessional will facilitate a math graphing center using Simply Kinder’s Solar Eclipse Count and Graph and Yes! It is a part of that resource!

Because these kinder cubs have only been in school for 10 days, there will be parameters on how they are going to complete this. My parapro will only give them 1 crayon at a time. She will have them color each group with only 1 color for each object. The colors will be green for earth, yellow for sun, and gray for moon.She will have them count each object in a group and then show them how to count that same number using the bars going from the bottom to the top of the bars. Then, she will draw a line across the top of the last bar in the number. That will give them a visual of where to color the bars. Then, they will color each set of bars to create the bar graph.

For an extension, I can have them write a sentence I see ________ moons, etc. or I think it would be great to have them count all of them and see what the total number is and compare it to the total number of bars that were colored.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed that my newbies will get this!! At least it will be great exposure to counting and comparing numbers.

Now….there will be two independent centers. At this stage of the game or year that is, it can be somewhat tricky when it comes to preparing an independent activity that won’t cause frustration or lots of “Teacher, teacher, I don’t know how to do this!” among my kinder cubs.

So one of the independent centers will be this Solar Eclipse Craft from Simply Kinder’s resource:

I didn’t really think of this as a craft. It is more of a model of what will happen during the solar eclipse.

Now you may be looking at this and thinking, “How in the world are kindergarten students going to do this independently?”

Great question!!

And I am going to give you a crazy and obsessed kindergarten teacher answer.

My family and I are going to cut out the pieces and put the craft together. I know!! Crazy?!?! But I really think it will be worth doing!

All the students are going to do is color it. Perhaps they may get BORED with this!! But I think they will enjoy doing that and then they can manipulate the moving moon to mimic the solar eclipse. I will get out colored pencils along with the crayons for this. Again, because I want this to be realistic, I will only have out the colors of crayons and/or colored pencils that will make it more of a realistic model. I am going to glue the sun that is attached to the black paper on the back of the Earth. The moon will be the only movable piece.

Now for the other independent center…

I needed to have another math center because technically the time that I am doing these centers is during my math block.

So, I created a counting math activity with a solar eclipse theme. And I am offering it to you for FREE!! So please go to my TpT store and download it. Click the pic below to get to my store and download it for FREE!!

After the centers are complete, we will color and put together a special solar eclipse hat that is also in the Simply Kinder Resource. I keep debating about this, because we are making hats each day for our Alphabet Action Time….so we’ll see!!

Then, I will talk to the kids about safety outside. Around 2:25 we will begin to make our way outside to the front of our building. The front of building will not give direct access for our little ones to see directly into the sun. That is being done on purpose. We really don’t want any eye injuries that day.

While we are out there, I plan to get the kids to use their senses to find out about the Solor Eclipse. Then, when we come back in, I will have them draw a picture of what they noticed while they were out there watching.

Last but not least, I plan on sending home mini MOON Pies and Capri SUNS as a little gift for making through the day!

Whew!!

Now I feel so much better!! My day is planned and now it is time to get it all prepared. YAY!!

For the kindness you’ve shown by reading this post, I have a giveway for you. Please enter the giveaway below to try for a $10 TpT giftcard. There will be 1 fortunate winner. The deadline is 12 am Monday morning.a Rafflecopter giveaway

I would love for you to tell me what your plans are for Monday, August 21st…..I mean…..

This morning as I was looking through my favorite blog posts on Bloglovin’, I came across this linky! Chalk One Up for the Teacher has brought back 2 For Tuesday! What a great way to see what other teachers may have on sale in their TpT store!! So I decided to join in and put 2 of products at half price!

I decided this week, I would go for my 2 popular science products! Click the pic below to find my TpT store!

These 2 products will make a great addition to teaching your kinders! I use the No Prep Sorting Sheets all year! They work as a great little formative assessment!

My Simple Science The 5 Senses Unit is Packed Full of many activities to use to teach the 5 senses in kindergarten. I teach this at the beginning of the school year. Then, throughout the year, my little kinder cubs are keenly aware of what their 5 senses are and which ones are best to use when.

Well, I just HAVE to share a little about what happened last week after we completed a science activity in our class with dying eggs.

During the week before Easter, I love using The Easter Bunny’s Assistant as my Guiding Readers focus book. I have posted before about Guiding Readers, I am a HUGE FAN of Deanna Jump’s and Deedee Wills’ Guiding Reader series. There are a TON of ideas in these resources and my kinder cubs get so much out of it! I’m able to teach ALL of the Common Core Reading Comprehension Standards and opinion writing standards by using these resources. Also, there are phonics skills and posters that I have used and posted in my classroom that have been great as well.

Click the image above if you’d like to look at this terrific resource.

This particular book is used in their series to teach cause and effect, and sequencing.

Anyway……

For the activity, I took raw eggs…yes raw…..

and we BLEW out the insides!! I mean what can be more FUN and ENGAGING than blowing out the GUTS of an egg!

Let me intercept here by saying this activity was done with a group of 4 kinder cubs at a time! There is no way in heaven that I could do this as a whole group!! My 55 (soon to be 56) year old body wouldn’t be able to handle that much “egg”citement with a whole group of 20 at one time!

I bought enough eggs for each student to have 1. I made sure that they were fresh store bought eggs. Before they put their mouth on the egg, I cleaned it with a sensitive skin baby wipe. I took a large push pin and poked a hole in both ends. I kind of wiggled the end where the insides came out to make the hole a little bigger. Then, I had the kinder cub stand over a large bowl and blow the TAR out (as my momma would say) of the egg. The white of the egg would come out first and if the white mucous thing started coming out, I would pull on that to get it out and then the yolk would come out last. As soon as it was all out, I would write that student’s number with a permanent marker on the end.

Was it messy? Heck, yea! Notice the butcher paper in the picture. I used it to try to capture all of the messes as they happened.

Did any eggs break during the process? Sure, I mean we’re working with kindergarten students….something is BOUND to break!! So, I came prepared with extra eggs.

Did any kinders get “GROSSED” out during the process? Only one had a funny look on his sweet face, but the rest of them were absolutely thrilled with the process!

After the numbers were written on the eggs, each kiddo in the group took a crayon (I let them choose a color first and then when I got to the 2nd group, I made them only use white crayons) and make designs on the empty egg shell.

Next came the dying process.

For each group, I took food coloring, water and vinegar and used the directions that were in The Easter Bunny’s Assistant to make the dye.

BTW….mixing the dye is SO easy!! You really don’t need an egg dying kit….just sayin’…even though I do love the type of spoons that come with them where the eggs can sit on the spoon. But I wanted my kinder cubs to see what happens when different liquids are mixed together.

I let each group choose 2 colors to make dye. Once we mixed the dye, they got to dip their egg in it and watch the magic happen!

As the kiddos took out their dyed egg, I would make sure they shook the eggs a little to try to get some of the dye out of the inside of the egg. Then, I placed it in an egg carton where there was a paper towel in there and let the eggs dry. After school, I put clean paper towels in the carton and turned the eggs over to continue draining and drying.

This is how a few of them looked when they were completely dry. The white one was a spare! 🙂

To encourage critical thinking, I used a How To Decorate Eggs writing response sheet that is in the Guiding Readers resource and the students completed it after they dyed the eggs.

So, once the eggs were dry…

which was the next day….

my parapro wrapped them nicely up and put them in plastic baggies. The kinder cubs didn’t put them in their book bags. They carried the bags…..

in their precious kinder hands…..

home with PRIDE!!

Now, the Georgia science standards we covered in this activity were:

SCI.K.SKCS1.a – [Element] – Raise questions about the world around you and be willing to seek answers to some of the questions by making careful observations (5 senses) and trying things out.

SCI.K.SKCS5.b – [Element] – Begin to draw pictures that portray features of the thing being described. (because they journaled about what they did and completed the How To sheet)

SCI.K.SKCS6.a – [Element] – In doing science, it is often helpful to work with a team and to share findings with others.

SCI.K.SKP2.b – [Element] – Push, pull, and roll common objects and describe their motions. (we talked about how we used the air from our bodies to PUSH the insides of the egg OUT)

The entire time we discussed so much that was science related! I was even able to talk about liquid and what would happen to the inside of the egg if it were cooked. I just love teachable moments like that!!

Now!!

To conclude this post and answer why I called it From School to Home….

even though I did say that they carried them home….

but that was not why I titled my post From School to Home…

On Good Friday, after we had left our Good Friday service at church and we were eating dinner in a restaurant, I got this text from a parent. It was a couple of pictures!!

I gasped!!

I hollered out a little (we were in a restaurant!!…I didn’t want to be too loud!) because……

You want to know what it was a picture of……?!?!

You guessed it!!…or maybe you didn’t…..

It was the dad with one of my precious kinder cubs, BLOWING the insides out of an egg!!

That precious girl went home and told her parents all about what we did and insisted that they do the same thing at home!!

Talk about making my teacher heart well up with JOY inside!!

I mean JELLY BEAN!!

Those pictures made that whole activity so worth it for me.

I know that my kinder cubs grew lots of little dendrites in their brains that afternoon, because they got to DO something, and it was an experience that hopefully they will never forget!

That night I went to bed loving my job and loving the 20 kinder cubs that I teach!!